Writing Workshop

Last year I began using a writing workshop format that I absolutely fell in love with.  Happily, so did my students.  Over the summer I read a book by Denise Leograndis called Launching the Writing Workshop.

It changed the way I think about teaching writing, and I was amazed by the way my students reacted.  For the first time in seven years, I had students actually complain when I would announce that writing workshop was finished for the day and it was time to meet and share.  "Mrs. Gerken, can I please finish this part of my story first?  Just a few more sentences, I promise."  The first time this happened I nearly fell over in a dead faint.  I was used to cheers when writing class was over, not collective groans of disappointment.  At first I thought that perhaps it was a fluke, maybe it was just first month enthusiasm.  But then it continued into October, then November, December, and - you get the idea.

So what changed that created this shift to writing as a joy instead of writing as a burden?  It took a long time for me to figure that out, and to be honest I'm still pondering it this summer.  I'm thinking another year under my belt and I'll really understand.  But for now, I think the biggest change was the amount of control I placed in the hands of my students.  That and some other tweaks that included individual conferencing and less whole group time, more independent writing time.  My students were free to write about any topic they chose, so long as it fit within the genre we were studying at that moment in time.  We began by writing anything we wanted - personal narratives, fantasy stories, poems, songs, reports, whatever their hearts desired.  That was the first step in the "write" direction (sorry for the pun, I just finished a 40 page research paper and I need a little humor in my writing about now).  Anyway, by allowing them that initial freedom of choosing their first piece of writing, I had them hooked.  When we moved on to specific genres like personal narratives, biographies, responses to books, descriptive reports, how-to paragraphs and informational reports, I allowed them a wide range of choice regarding the topic, as long as it fell within the genre.  For example, when I used to teach writing biographies, they had to write a biography on a famous person, dead or alive, but it had to be someone they could get on the Internet or browse books to research.  But last year, I allowed them to choose anyone - famous or not famous, alive or no longer alive.  I was surprised by how many students decided to research someone close to them, like a family member.  I was always hesitant to allow this before, because I couldn't control the actual research process.  They developed a list of questions, but then it was the responsibility of the student to find the answers outside of school, usually by conducting an interview with that person, or someone who knew that person.  I think the idea of students doing different kinds of research all at once had previously given me a small anxiety attack.  But I found that, although it was a little chaotic having everyone doing different types of research at once, that the students were so enthusiastic and excited about their writing, that it more than made up for the minor lack of organization that creeped its way into our workshop time.  When I had taught writing a description, I always gave them boundaries like, "it has to be an object you can touch" or "a place."  Last year, they could describe anything they want, and I had students describing things like dolphins, Rapunzel and Spongebob.

What made it all work?  Besides the choice factor, I think using the same process for writing every single time made a difference.  I know that seems obvious, but we had seven specific steps we used for each genre: collecting ideas, planning, drafting, response groups, revising, editing, publishing.  We faithfully stuck to those steps, and that consistency helped them stay focused for the duration of that genre.  I also allowed students to work at their own pace.  We had a giant wheel with all seven steps listed around the outside, and at the beginning of every class, I would ask who was on what step for that day, and then move their name to that section of the wheel.  It helped set a focus for the independent writing time.  As a result, I would literally have students at all stages of the writing process.  Those who were still planning their writing, and others who were already on to editing their work.  In the past, I always made everyone stay at the same place.  We all collected ideas the same day, planned the same day, had the same amount of days to draft, and so on.  If someone finished, they had to wait to move on to the next step until we were all ready to go on.  After reading Denise Leograndis' book, and having a long talk with myself about what it would mean to truly differentiate my writing instruction, I decided this didn't make a lick of sense, and decided to try it another way.  Allowing students to move at their own pace worked beautifully, and as a result, my kids produced pieces of writing that they were proud of - and so was I.

CAFE Posters

As I mentioned in my previous post, last year was my first attempt at using Daily 5 and CAFE in my classroom of third graders.  Although Daily 5 helped me organize my reading block more effectively, CAFE allowed me to organize the many, many skills and strategies that are needed to be a good reader.  Having the strategies and skills posted for both myself and the students to refer to really enhanced all areas of my reading instruction.  I was able to refer to the strategies during whole group, guided reading groups, and individual conferencing.  My student teacher also enjoyed using the CAFE system, and said that as someone just beginning a career in teaching, it helped her make sense of the complex task of teaching reading.

This year, although I am still using the four CAFE areas of Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary, I am going to switch the letters around to spell FACE instead.  It's a trend I've noticed popping up on a lot of other blogs, and I am attracted to the idea of telling students that these skills and strategies are the "FACE of a Reader."  Instead of offering them the skills and strategies as menu options, which is the idea behind CAFE, students need to know that they should be able to use all of the skills and strategies at any needed time.  Sort of like how our face is always equipped with eyes, nose, ears, mouth, etc., but we don't use them all the time, and each serves a specific purpose.  So no disrespect intended to Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, because it is their creation after all, but I think I will try this little switcheroo this year.  Same skills and strategies, just a different way of presenting them to the students.

I made new sports themed CAFE/FACE posters for the new school year that are available for free in my Teachers pay Teachers store.  For more information on the CAFE system, please visit the Sisters' website, or refer to their published work, The CAFE Book.

Daily 5

Last year was my first year using the Daily 5 and CAFE systems in my classroom.  For those who are unfamiliar with these two programs, both are the creation of two innovative ladies by the name of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  The Daily 5 is a way of organizing your language arts block to ensure students have quality time to practice their reading and writing skills.  The CAFE program helps you organize your reading instruction into four components: Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary.  To find out more about these programs visit the Sisters' website, The Daily CAFE.

One of the first lessons in the Daily 5 program is teaching children how to choose good fit books for their independent reading.  Boushey and Moser suggest using the acronym PICK to provide students with guidelines to follow when they are hunting for books: Purpose, Interest, Comprehend, and Know. Students should ask themselves these four questions when deciding if a book is a good fit: What is my purpose for reading this book?  Am I interested in this book?  Do I comprehend or understand this book?  Do I know, or can I read, most of the words in this book?

I had a lot of success teaching my students to use the "I PICK good fit books" system when determining if a book was appropriate for their independent reading.  As a result of using those four questions, it seemed that there was a lot less book "abandoning", because students were making their initial choices wisely.  I had a simple poster last year, but since I decided to stick with the PICK system, I created some newer, snazzier posters to laminate and keep permanently.

You can download the posters for free at my Teachers pay Teacher store.  There is a very cute PICK lesson involving different types and sizes of shoes that was a hit with my kiddos last year.  For more details, I would strongly recommend obtaining a copy of Boushey and Moser's book, The Daily 5.  It is a quick read, but the benefits will last you the entire school year and beyond!

Student Behavior Management

Since it's going to be several weeks before I am able to be in my classroom, I am trying to work ahead and get as much done as possible at home.  Working at home in the air conditioning definitely has its perks, but I've already thought of several resources or materials I need in order to complete certain projects.  And they are all at school.

I've seen many great examples of behavior clip charts on Pinterest, and was inspired to make a sports themed chart to go with our building-wide theme.

I actually use silver and gold for the top two colors, but since those are hard to replicate on a computer, I used blue and purple instead for the version I posted in my TpT store.  I first started using gold and silver last year to give my "naturally" well-behaved students something to aim for.  The years prior I had several students who would stay on green all year, with very little effort.  After discussing this fact with some of my colleagues, we decided to add silver and gold above green.  Students have to give an extra effort in order to progress to those colors, like helping a classmate, or cleaning up areas of the classroom without being asked.  When a student made it to silver or gold, they received a star of that color to take home and share with their families.  The parent response was very positive and enthusiastic, especially when students who have difficulty using self-control were able to achieve those colors.  

We also allow students to move up and down the scale of colors, with the exception being landing on red.  Since red is reserved for major offenses (foul language, cheating, physically harming someone), once a child is on red, that is where they stay for the remainder of that day.  But I found that allowing students on yellow and pink the opportunity to redeem themselves had a positive effect on the classroom environment.  In past years, students who made it to yellow before lunchtime usually shut down and gave no effort to make wise choices the remainder of the day.  They knew they were on yellow and were staying there, so what was the point in trying to be good.  Everyone suffered, and I found this resulted in a "disturbance in the force."  This year my grade level team decided to try allowing students to work their way back to green to see if that would prevent those "shut down" behaviors.  I noticed a remarkable difference in student attitudes, and was kicking myself that I hadn't done this long ago.  There were several students in my classroom last year who benefited from this type of approach.  After I would move a student's color, I reminded them that they had the chance to go back to green, and they immediately began the work of making the type of behavior choices that would get them back on green.  Besides, I am always preaching to my students that it is okay to make mistakes, as long as we learn from them, and this new behavior system is much more in keeping with that theme.  I also felt more freedom to move clips to yellow or pink, knowing that I could move them back to green.  In the past I always gave a child more than a few verbal reminders before changing colors, because I knew that once he or she was on yellow, I was going to be dealing with either tears, sinister I'm-plotting-your-demise looks, or sullen refusal-to-participate-in-anything-the-rest-of-the-day behaviors. With this new system I had far less of those undesirable responses, and was able to concentrate on things other than behavior management.  Here's hoping that the new system works just as well with my new "crop" of kiddos!

Common Core Posters Part 2

After a busy weekend and a busy start to the week, I finally got around to making the social studies and science Common Core posters for third grade.  I have to say that after diving into all four subject areas, I feel as though math and science have had the biggest changes, at least for third grade.  I will be very interested to share notes with the fourth and fifth grade teachers in my building.  The posters are available in my TpT store, but here's a little sample:

Here's the best part of all this: now that I have all of the posters done, I am probably going to go back and change the backgrounds on all of them to match the sports theme in my building this year.  Ha!

In other Common Core news, I am compiling the standards into one massive at-a-glance sheet for each subject area, to keep in my new and improved teacher binder for this year.  Although I like the more extensive resources provided by the state, sometimes I need everything in a condensed format that's right at my fingertips.  So far, language arts and math are the only ones I've finished, but social studies and science will follow soon.  The At-A-Glance sheets for language arts and math are also available in my TpT store.  Here's an idea of the look I'm going for:

Finally, I just have to share the cover and dividers I made for inside my teacher binder.  My daughter is obsessed with very into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so after watching about 6-10 episodes one morning (I lose track after awhile), Mickey and friends became the inspiration for decorating my binder.  I cannot take credit for the names of the sections, they were an idea from one of the many teaching blogs I follow although, alas, I cannot remember which one.  But I am excited with how they turned out, and they will be a piece of my baby girl I have at school with me each day.

Common Core Posters Part 1

I had a successful trip to the Dollar Tree today, and consequently, so did my 2 year old.  She left with 2 Mickey Mouse puzzles and a Big Bird pop up book.  I found some cute wire baskets that I'm sure will serve some sort of purpose, cute packages of colorful patterned card stock, sports stickers to match our sports theme this year, and some square foam letters, capitals and lowercase.  Last year my student teacher created letter magnets for my students to use with a cookie sheet in the Word Work station, and they LOVED them, but there weren't enough letters for them to make all of the words on their spelling list.  So I was thrilled to find those foam letters today.  All I have to do is cut them apart, put some magnets on the back, and I can cross that project off my to do list.

Speaking of to do list, I knew one project I really wanted to accomplish this summer was to dive into our new third grade Common Core Standards.  I've read a bunch of blogs, found a ton of resources on Pinterest, and studied the multiple packets provided by my school district.  There were several sites and blogs that offered I Can statement posters to match the standards, but most of them had a price tag.  So I figured I would just make my own for free.  I am actually really glad I took on this project, because I feel so much more familiar with the standards after putting them into kid-friendly wording.

I am finished with third grade language arts and math, but am still working on third grade social studies and science.  You can see some sample images below, but to get the poster sets, you'll need to go to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  If you don't have a TpT account, it's super simple to set one up (and you can opt to just be a buyer, not a seller) and you can then download a TON of free resources.  You can also purchase things others have made if you see something you just have to have.  None of my products have a price tag, so help yourself!

A Piece of Cake

No, this isn't a blog about food, although the title of the blog, the title of this post, and my username do give that impression.  So allow me to explain.  I love Mary Poppins.  In fact, I love all things Disney, but I have always had an especial fondness for Mary.  She slides up banisters, pulls an endless amount of objects out of her carpetbag (sometimes I feel that way about my school bag), jumps into chalk pictures - and she can fly.  What's not to admire?  Mary was the uber babysitter, and she cared very much about the children she was responsible for.

But this isn't a blog about babysitting, it's a blog about teaching.  Specifically, my adventures in teaching.  Now, I'm no Mary Poppins.  I am not "practically perfect in every way" although I do enjoy singing and dancing about for my students.  But it occurred to me recently that every year, every month, every week, I am trying something new in my classroom.  Some experiments work, and some explode in my face like a chimney (if you know your Poppins trivia, you should be picturing Michael with a faceful of soot right about now).  So I figured, why not share the successes and the failures with others.  If my ideas can help inspire others or prevent them from making the same mistakes, than this blog will have fulfilled its job.

So I leave you with the opening to the song "A Spoonful of Sugar" the inspiration for this blog title.  I think it quite nicely has some parallels to the teaching profession, although I doubt that was the intention of the Sherman brothers when they wrote it.  You can judge for yourself.

In every job that must be done
there is an element of fun.
You find the fun and...
SNAP!  The job's a game.
And every task you undertake
becomes a piece of cake.
A lark.  A spree.
It's very clear to see.
That a spoonful of sugar
makes the medicine go down.
In a most delightful way.